Introduction

My chessfriends,

Collecting the data, researching material and analyzing the games took me a long time. Now, dear readers, you are holding the product of many-many years, the book. This writing is a supplementary work which contains corrections, improvements to the recently published studies in this field. Although they seem easy, I noticed, the top grandmasters' endgames are full of mistakes, inaccuracies. This situation becomes even worse with the huge masses of open players, their knowledge of endgames leaves a lot to be required. That was the main reason why I wrote this book. I especially relied on the old classicals - Grigorev and Zinar to be precise - who discovered the secrets of endgames with few pawns. The endings of important games which were played recently were given priority, especially those of leading grandmasters. It is well worth studying the queen endings as well. They often arise after queening pawns. I omitted commentaries that can be found in the above mentioned works. The symbols and signs can easily be understood in the "international language" of chess.

Last but not least I would like to say thank you everybody who contributed in any way, to the writing of this book.